I'm not sure when I sat down to figure out how to make these roses, but I do know that I found it rather fascinating when I first dissected one in grade school. To my surprise, I discovered that it was a merely a long rectangle of fabric, twisted over itself and wrapped about a wire stem. Sounds easy, doesn't it? In theory it is, but takes practice to make it look good.
It was in moments like these that my longstanding love for the juxtaposition of simplicity with intricacy was born. I am still amazed at how a simple rectangular strip could be fashioned into a multilayered rose while remaining a rectangle. Or does it? I am not sure if there are any metaphysical issues with calling it a rectangle when that property is not so easily discernible by those that have no knowledge of the process by which the rose is made. I only took about 2 years of undergraduate math and but based on what I've read, I didn't poke any holes in it so it's topologically the same. Of course, topologists are rather forgiving of distortions, as the classical example of coffee mug = donut shows. From other points of view, they are not the same, as things are categorized via whatever concepts our minds use to impose order upon the world and all that jazz. It is certainly more than the sum of its parts, unless you count the folding as a part of the final product. Let's just call it more than the sum of its material parts and leave it at that.
